A serpent in disguise
by clarke.beu
Summary: After saving him from a certain death, Hermione knew that she must run. She should have never interfered with fate. And now as he chased her, she wondered how long she would last until the serpent poisoned her soul.


Chapter One

_\- His wand._

* * *

Everyone thought she was dead.

Hermione Granger's head rested on Ginny's lap. The dawn light displayed the grief-struck expression on the red-haired girl's face. Hermione's eyes were cold and empty. She struggled to blink, to breathe and to move; to give them a sign that she was all right. She was _alive_.

She wanted to ask Ginny about Harry and Ron but her body was not obeying. She was limp and heavy against her best-friend's little sister.

Ginny continued to rock back and forth as she had for the last hour since the final battle ended. A few whispers escaped from her every now and then as if she was praying. But Hermione knew better, because the Weaselys weren't religious.

A tear dropped on Hermione's forehead and she knew then, that Ginny's heart was breaking.

Hermione immediately knew that Ginny's heart was breaking for her, and for Ron, and Harry. So they weren't all right, then. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, to kick and break something but she didn't move.

At first, she had been thankful that she had not been hit with the killing curse. Now, she fully regretted it. Whatever curse she had been hit with, it was ten times crueller. Was she to be trapped in her own body for all eternity?!

'Please let me die,' she thought, wondering if God could hear it. She should have asked her aunt Margaret. It was funny in a way how her least favourite aunt came to mind in this very precise moment. She remembered calling her strict religious aunt, Margaret Tudor, making fun of the overzealous religious woman that wholly believed that God put her son in the throne.

"Don't you leave as well…" Ginny whispered.

A cold shiver ran down Hermione's spine. She didn't want to stay. She didn't want to stay in a world where Harry and Ron no longer existed.

'Please…please kill me…' Hermione pleaded inwardly. She prayed to every God and Goddess that she knew and begged for salvation.

Hermione would have gasped as she felt a violent tug in her chest. It became suddenly extremely harder to breathe but she didn't struggle for air. She had to remind herself that this was what she wanted. The strange tug began to tear at her body and she could she would have let out a loud excruciating scream.

As her vision began to falter, she wondered if her prayers had been answered or that this was just the unknown curse taking its sweet time.

'It doesn't matter…' she thought.

And it didn't, because prayer or not, salvation did come for her; - just not the one she yearned for.

Hermione sucked in a deep breath as her lungs burned as though they had been set on fire. As she opened her eyes, she stared up at a bruised sky with vivid colours of orange, red and purple.

She wondered if this was what the after-life looked like, because if it was then it was absolutely mesmerizing.

Hermione took another deep breath before she decided to sit up. Nothing had prepared for what happened next. All around her, people screamed and began moving in panic. She turned her head to look over her shoulder and her eyes widened at the sight of a crowd staring wide-eyed back at her.

She had never seen those people before. They all dressed in grey and brown fabrics, their clothes were worn out and there were visible patches that pathetically tried to keep their rotting clothes together.

She suddenly realized they looked awfully alive to her.

"She's not dead…" a woman to her left whispered in a mix of awe and terror.

'I'm not?' Hermione thought frantically.

Then where the hell was she? And more importantly who were those people?

"She's with the devil," another woman spoke so matter-of-factly that everyone else seemed to immediately agree with her.

"It's okay," Hermione said, "It's all right…" her words were slurred. She placed her hand up in a reassuring gesture and tried to calm them down – to explain – that she was not the devil but her raspy voice was lost in the screams.

At once everyone inched backwards, pressing each other against the back of the room. Hermione opened her mouth to tell them that it was all right but at that very moment the door of the room was yanked open, revealing three men clad in dark long cloaks.

The three men stared, looking back and forth between Hermione and the fearful crowd. They seemed to be expecting some sort of explanation, answers to questions that she could not answer.

"I thought the muggle was dead?" one of the men asked. He was tall with dark long hair with a matching beard.

"She was dead," The man that replied was considerably shorter. He had a nasty scar across his left eye. He sounded like he encountered people coming back from the dead every day.

"Well, she ain' dead is she? She bloody breathin', that's wha' she is." The third man spoke with a strong accent.

Hermione's eyes widened slightly. She knew them to be wizards the moment she first saw them but they thought her to be a muggle. They had no clue whatsoever about whom she truly was. Where was she? The last thing she remembered as she drifted away was Ginny's face.

"I'm not a muggle," Hermione quickly replied as she finally gathered her wits. Discreetly, she glanced over the frightened crowd and she could tell that they being held here against their will by these wizards.

The accent man threw his head back and roared with laughter, "Ya dun' even kno' wha a muggle is, lassie."

"I am not a muggle," she repeated sternly, "I'm a witch." She told them and raised her chin up as she moved her hand down to search for her wand. A panic look briefly showed in her eyes as she couldn't find it.

"How convenient." The scar man's voice was bristly as he gave her an uninterested stare, "You spend your life hunting and burning our kind but when it's your turn-"

An unexpected green light flashed into the room and the scar man fell down with a loud thump onto the floor. Sweat prickled Hermione's brow and suddenly she broke out into an all-out sprint. She ran past the other two wizards and her gaze met the coldest grey-blue eyes.

A hooded-man clad in a dark green robe looked back at her, his wand pointed at the other two wizards. He was with no doubt the one that had cast the killing-curse. The howling wind forced the man's hood away and Hermione catches a flash of dark hair and perfect ivory skin.

An angel.

She didn't know why she associated such man with a being that she doubted existed. She had to blink to make sure that he was real.

He quickly dismissed her and stared back at the other two men. Hermione remained a few feet behind him, watching in horror as more wizards seemed to come out of hiding. They were six of them against one. It was hardly a fair fight but she could tell that this man must be a formidable opponent by the way the other six warily approached him.

The fight started so abruptly that Hermione could barely keep up with it. Spells flew towards the lone man – the angel – but he quickly blocked them. It was as if all of them were dancing rehearsed movements.

The accent man barked a laugh as one of the spells eventually hit the angel. Hermione stilled a gasp as the angel's robes were set on fire. However, the angel removed the cloak with a fluid movement, throwing it over his shoulder, revealing a taut and muscled body.

Spells were thrown back and forth once more and Hermione stood in her spot as though she had been hit with a full body-bind curse.

Her eyes widened in horror as the angel's wand flew from his grasp onto the unlevelled ground just a few feet away from her. The man was suddenly forced on his knees and one by one the wizards began throwing curse after curse. The accent man walked up to him. He stalked like he was a lion about to deliver its final blow to his prey. As Hermione watched, she got the feeling that this was the culmination of several battles between them.

"Yeh shud' never have come here." The accent man said as he pointed his wand at the angel.

Before Hermione could stop herself, she was moving and fast. She fell on her knees, wincing in pain as she felt her skin scrape against the ground. She closed her hand around the strange wand and felt a strong tug against her entire body. How odd, it was as if the wand was trying to fight her off.

"Ava-"

"Exp-"

"da ke-"

"lliarmus!"

The accent man's wand was magically forced away from his hand. Slowly, he looked towards her, his eyes were open wide in utter disbelief.

"I told you. I am a witch."

Hermione would have smirked but as the angel turned his head to glance at her she felt like her entire world came to an abrupt stop.

Dangling in his neck was a chain that she had been quite familiar with. A locket in the form of an 'S' glowed in the distance.

'No… it can't be…'

* * *

A/N: About the title and the summary. I'm sorry. I am horrible with those. I had so many titles ideas. Some of them were so ridiculous. Like "The angel's wand" but that sounded so… awkwardly sexual to me? I guess I'm just a pervert. Whatever. XD

Thanks for reading.


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